Daily Times

Forty Rules of Love is a work of fiction. This great literary work has significant appeal in the contemporary world, presently engulfed in bitter waves of hatred, antagonism and religious myopia that, like a festering wound, eat at the very roots of collective thinking, concepts of co-existence and universal brotherhood. Elif Shafak is an award winning Turkish writer, columnist, speaker and academic, with 10 books to her credit, out of which two are novels in English. These include The Bastard of Istanbul and Forty Rules of Love. Elif Shafak is a brave champion of cosmopolitanism, a sophisticated feminist and an ambitious novelist. Her books have been published in more than 40 countries and she was awarded the honourary distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 2010.
In addition to fiction writing, Shafak is also a political scientist, with a PhD in Political Science and a degree in Gender and Women’s Studies. Her special interest in writing on Sufism can be gauged from her earlier works. Her first novel in the Turkish language, The Mystic, was awarded the Rumi Prize in 1998 in Turkey. Konya in Turkey was the city where Rumi himself lived, flourished into a well-reputed Islamic scholar and then turned into a Sufi. Being a Turkish citizen herself, this city augments Shafak’s interest to focus more on historical instances that bring further cohesion in the rank and file of humans worldwide, an urge emanating from the political vision of the author. In short, the novel is a clear reflection of her personality as a pacifist, cosmopolitanist, political scientist and feminist.
Forty Rules of Love revolves around electronic correspondence between the main character, Ella Rubinstein, and A Z Zahara, a convert to Sufism. The author magnificently connects the past with the present through this correspondence and capitalises on the character of Ella who suffers from a troubled marriage, isolation in her family and assumes herself as a marginalised figure within the peripheries of her own home. Her heart is barren and longs for love. She finally comes in contact with the character of Shams of Tabriz, Rumi and the forty rules of Sufi order love. The contact with these rules of Sufism and someone who believes in them in the person of A Z Zahara gives a new tinge to Ella’s life, with her wanting a change from within. Love, which she never experiences in its originality during the 40 years of her marriage, finally turns a sympathetic gaze on her in the person of A Z Zahara. She quits her children, husband and home to experience love with Zahara whose candle of life is already flickering. He is suffering from a fatal type of cancer with only 16 months to live. Ella plunges into the valley of love with least regard for the consequences.
The general concept of the novel mainly caters to prove the embedded plurality, tolerance, concept of co-existence and respect for ideological diversities in Islam, making love the foundation stone for these concepts. It differs from the dogmatic interpretation of religion and tries to show a liberal picture of Islam where the relation of an individual’s heart with God matters more than certain dogmatic interpretations. To achieve this end, the author weaves the forty rules of Sufi order love into a story and proceeds to support the thesis of the book. She holds less regard for the formal ways of religion and prefers more the methods of the wandering Sufis. For example, the author brings out a narration from the time of Moses (PBUH) where Moses admonishes a shepherd for praying blasphemously and teaches him the right method of prayer. However, when Moses talks to God, He loves that blasphemy and calls it a sweet blasphemy, asking Moses to tell the praying shepherd to pray in his own way. This is how the author tries to prove that sincerity belongs to the heart, not actions.
But times have changed and learning the approved methods of praying has been made obligatory upon each Muslim. So, one cannot go on praying by following his/her own whims and caprices. Moreover, she also tries to establish that delving deep into the minute details of sharia will kill the very purpose that sharia stands to serve. She quotes Shams of Tabriz as saying: “The sharia is like a candle. It provides us with much valuable light. But let us not forget that a candle helps us to go from one place to another in the dark. If we forget where we are headed and instead concentrate on the candle, what good is it?” I do agree here with the author that sharia is definitely a set of laws that stands for making the life of the believers easier. However, it is necessary to acquire the right method of lighting the candle lest one burn one’s own hands.
The author beautifully establishes the fact that when in love, the lover and beloved remain no more different than those who love God. They prove it through their godly actions that include kindness, love, sympathy, feeding the poor, feeling the pain of others and extending love to the most hated. To prove this point, she narrates the instance of Shams when he asks Rumi to beg in front of the very mosque where he would deliver speeches to his hundreds of thousands of disciples, and buy wine from a tavern to feel how society looks upon people belonging to these sections. She quotes Shams explaining one of the Sufi rules: “You can study God through everything and everyone in the universe because God is not confined in a mosque, synagogue, or church. But if you are still in need of knowing where His abode is, there is only one place to look for Him: in the heart of a true lover.”
The author tries to combat prevalent pessimism around the world and tries to cure it through the medicine of belief in God. She quotes Shams as saying, “Whatever happens to your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighbourhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that he has been denied.”
In short, the author touches all the aspects of life and tries to bring a paradigm shift in the thinking of her readers over certain concepts of life in general and Islam in particular. She inculcates the values of humility and love through living characters of Sufi legends: Shams of Tabriz and Rumi. The author lays special emphasis on the respect for woman in Islam, quoting verses from Surah Nisa, showing that a verse can be interpreted in two different ways by self-serving ulema, righteous and enlightened men. This is a good effort to implant in the minds of Muslim think-tanks, religious scholars and the intelligentsia that the Muslim world is not only undergoing political degeneration but that social problems also make Islamic teachings further distant from common Muslims who, failing to find a solution to their problems in religion, go astray. This part of the novel smacks of the feminist overtones in Elif Shafak’s character because the novel revolves around Sufism and love for God but she tries to impart women’s rights in Islam.
The author has proved herself faithful to the thesis of the book by preaching love, tolerance, co-existence, patience and humility at a crucial time when Islam is under attack from extremists. I would recommend the book because it embodies the cure for many ills in the contemporary world. The changes this novel brought to my personality include having a more tolerant view of others, listening to others patiently, good use of logic and the true meaning of our love for God.

The writer is Daily Times’ Quetta correspondent